Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2003 Issue
Americana, Water and the American West:<br>This Month’s New Americana Catalogues
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Minorities weren’t the only people oppressed during the 19th century. Item 133 looks at the oppression of 50% of the population. It is a collection of documents from 1850-1887 pertaining to women’s rights. The collection was evidently put together by Lucy Stone in 1890 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first women’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. Writings from Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are among the numerous documents in this collection. $30,000.
Was Abraham Lincoln assassinated by Jack the Ripper? The answer, of course, is “no,” and yet surprisingly there is a connection. That connection, one Dr. Francis Tumblety, a sleaze if ever there was one, is now a prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. A man with an intense hatred of women, likely inflamed by his former wife’s supposed employment as a prostitute, Tumblety was in the right place (Liverpool) at the right time (1888) for the Ripper killings. And Tumblety had been known earlier to possess a collection of preserved female anatomical parts (as any respectable physician might).
Shortly prior to the killings, Tumblety had been arrested on indecency charges. He was later held on suspicion in the killings and released on bail, whereupon he fled to Italy and then back to America. British agents followed him, but never made charges sufficient to bring him back to England. Tumblety would then succeed in fading from view, eventually dying in St. Louis in 1903 in possession of some cheap jewelry which might have come from one of the Ripper victims. He is buried in Rochester, New York, where he spent his youth.
Long before all of this, Tumblety was practicing his profession, fraud, all around America. He was a “quack,” dispensing fraudulent medicines and getting himself arrested for all types of misbehavior such as wearing military medals he did not earn. But, what does all of this have to do with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? Seems that the not-so-good “doctor” was imprisoned for three weeks on orders of Secretary of War Stanton for complicity in the Lincoln assassination. In the truly bizarre, considering the sleazy reputation of Dr Tumblety, this charge came about because of a case of mistaken identity. At the time, Tumblety was using the alias of “Dr Blackburn,” and a different individual by that name was the one being sought for investigation. Item 128 in the Brown catalogue is Tumblety’s A Few Passages in the Life of Dr. Francis Tumblety, The Indian Herb Doctor, Including his Experiences in the Old Capitol Prison, To which he was Consigned, with a Wanton Disregard to Justice and Liberty. By Order of Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War… This is Tumblety’s self-defense and protest against his arrest. Printed in Cincinnati in 1866. Item 128. $450.
